When it comes to killing off a character in any series (one of the most infamous examples being Chin Ho’s death at the end of #10 of the original “Five-O,” for starters), how does that work? As far as I know, the portrayer doesn’t die, only the character dies (like Kam Fong, in the example I cited).
No, they shoot the actor as well.
What the heck are you asking?
bmasters1, it’s fiction. The authors imagined the character alive, then they imagined them dead. Simples.
Or do you mean by what mechanism is the actor fired?
Sometimes it’s by agreement. Sometimes it’s against the actor’s wishes.
And occasionally the actor dies and either the writers ‘kill’ the character, or they contrive a plot device whereby the character goes elsewhere, or they replace the actor.
Weird question.
“Your usefulness is at an end!” <BLAM!> <Strokes white cat on lap>
Aren’t you at least obliged to say ‘Bwah hah hah’ or cackle or something?
That’s what I wondered. Sometimes, both character and actor pass on (like with Michael Conrad, who died in the middle of #4 of “Hill Street Blues,” and as such, they wrote Phil Esterhaus to have passed on in the middle of getting it on, IIRC).
Sometimes the writers kill off a character to show how hard-core the plot is.
I’m almost finished with season 3 of the show 24 (Amazon Prime has got me hook, line, and sinker). When the virus-terrorist wanted Palmer to kill Ryan, I just knew there was going to be an annoying deus ex machina. Even though the guy was like the Rocket Romano of CTU, I still couldn’t believe that they were actually going to kill him off, especially in such a sad way. The previous season should have warned me that the writers weren’t above such dramatics, but I guess they fooled me 'cuz I was all “Oh my goodness! I can’t believe they let this happen! What’s gonna happen now?”
So, I think it was obvious a ploy to keep the audience from getting jaded, since there’s only so many times that Jack Bauer can swoop down and save the day at that last minute.
If only they had done this when Denise Crosby left ST:NG.
Killing off characters “makes you care.” Joss can kiss my hairy white ass for all the carnage and heartbreak he’s put me through. I still to this day can’t watch “The Body” a second time.
If done judiciously and carefully, it also gives more of a sense that anything can happen rather than the usual “everything will reboot at the end of the episode and no one is ever in any real danger”.
You know Picard/Buffy/Gibbs isn’t going to die. Therefore they’re never in any real danger. When they are placed in danger, you think less of the danger and start thinking ahead to “ok, how is s/he getting out of this one”
Yeah, it can happen either way. Sometimes the character is killed off because the actor is no longer available. (Either they died, or they left the series—Col. Blake was killed off when McLean Stevenson left the cast of MAS*H.) Or the character is killed off as a creative decision—because the character’s death is an important plot point, or because the series creators don’t want the character on the show any more—and as a result, the actor who played the character is out of a job.
Yeah, look what happened to Joey’s character on his soap opera. He was talking big to the press about how he sometimes makes up his own dialog, so the writer killed him off.
Then he got to come back as someone else transplanted into his old body (am I remembering that right?).
I remember getting a little choked up at the memorial scene, when Tasha Yar died in ST:TNG; not so much when she kept popping up (twice, at least: alternate universe where she wasn’t killed; and as her own-daughter?)
I’ll bet, if they really needed to and wanted to, they could have figured out a way to bring McLean Stevenson back to MASH even after they killed off his character. Twin brother? Who knows?
One thing that TV proves is that death is not forever.
Roddy
Perhaps the biggest dilemma for the writers and producers of The Sopranos was whether to kill off Tony in the final episode. Everybody knew that was the end of the show, so anything would have worked. So what do they do? Have the goddamn screen go black! You never really know about what “really happened” to Tony, and you have to finish the writers’ job for them.
The producers admitted that the original plan was to fake out Chappelle’s death and bring him back later in the season. But this was somehow leaked to the press and so they decided to kill him off for reals.
But in the interim seasons they whacked major players without compunction. It was all plot driven, AFAIK, and had little or nothing to do with actors’ contracts, etc.
I don’t mean to hijack the thread, but if they’d really wanted to have done ST: Voyager right, they would have signed the cast to short term contracts and then killed a few of them off slowly over the first couple of seasons.
Such a thing would also allow them to get rid of actors who just aren’t working out, even mid-season, and replace them with new people.
Given the premise of Voyager, wasn’t there a limited (though obviously not non-existent) ability to add new characters/actors? :smack: 
Not necessarily the ship supposedly had a pretty big crew, over 150 I think. They could have added new main characters by promoting various unnamed crewmen to officers. And added tension with the idea of the ship being understaffed and the crew overworked.
To this day, I have never watched the last three minutes of “Seeing Red.” Killing Tara to trigger Willow’s fall to the Dark Side was unforgivable. (And getting hit by a stray bullet – on Buffy The Vampire Slayer? That’s like someone dying of pneumonia on Star Trek…).
And to add salt to the wound, Joss puts Amber Benson (Tara) in the opening credits for the first and only time that episode. Harsh.
Hey, it worked for Brandon Lee.